Page 14 - IAV Digital Magazine #462

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UFOs Spotted Off Irish Coast Under Investigation
The Irish Aviation Authority is inves- tigating reports of bright lights and UFOs off the south-west coast of Ireland.
It began at 06:47 local time on Friday 9 November when a British Airways pilot contacted Shannon air traf- fic control.
She wanted to know if there were military exercises in the area because
there was some- thing "moving so fast".
The air traffic controller said there were no such exercises.
The pilot, flying from the Canadian city of Montreal to Heathrow, said there was a "very bright light" and the object had come up along the left side of the aircraft before it "rapidly veered to the north".
She was wonder- ing what it could be but said it did not seem to be heading for a col- lision.
Another pilot from a Virgin plane joined in and sug- gested it might be a meteor or another object re- entering the earth's atmos- phere.
He said there were "multiple objects following the same sort of
trajectory" and that they were very bright.
The pilot said he saw "two bright lights" over to the right which climbed away at speed.
One pilot said the speed was "astronomical, it was like Mach 2" - which is twice the speed of sound.
Apostolos Christou, an astronomer from
the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, said what the pilots saw was proba- bly a piece of dust entering the earth's atmos- phere at very high speed.
"It was most like- ly what are com- monly called shooting stars," he said.
"It appears the matter was extremely bright so it must have been quite a large piece of material.
"I cannot say from the pilots' description, but it could have been the size of a wal- nut or an apple."
The astronomer said November tended to be a very busy month for such activity.
"It also appears there were bits
coming off the object and flying past the airplane, that is also what you would expect if it was a particu- larly large rock from space hitting the atmosphere, it would tend to fragment."
"Following reports from a small number of aircraft on Friday 9 November of unusual air activi- ty the IAA has filed a report," the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) said.
"This report will be investigated under the normal confidential occurrence inves- tigation process."
A spokesperson for Shannon Airport said it would not be appropriate for the airport to comment while the IAA investiga- tion is ongoing.
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